To Choose Who'll Lose

Mark's MailboxFebruary 29, 2020

https://www.steynonline.com/10088/to-choose-wholl-lose

As a follow-up to his recent Clubland Q&A, Mark answers more questions from Mark Steyn Club members around the planet on the recent Democrat debate debacles and whether party bigshots are simply trying to calculate who's the best guy to lose to Trump. Plus the need for a wider public discourse, cancel culture at the hospital, and a footnote of dust. Click below to watch:

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32 Member Comments

Drew • Mar 2, 2020 at 18:07

So leftists have no doubt that the worst psychopathic criminals who have tortured and murdered innocents are owed exemplary medical care in prison. BUT if you express an opinion of which leftists disapprove, you are not worthy of medical attention, consigned to a no-care gulag in a government run system. Why are voters for leftist parties not shocked or ashamed yet?

Jim Brick • Mar 2, 2020 at 09:28

The news from Ireland is extremely worrying. Sinn Fein, the party that's a front for the IRA, won almost 25% of votes in the recent General Election and became the largest party in the State. recent opinion polls nw show that in a new election they would win 35% and be in an an unassailable position and almost certainly become the leading party in government. Who are they? What is the IRA? Ruth Dudley Edwards in today's Belfast Telegraph give a useful history lesson for our deluded and ignorant electorate.

"In 1940, when Germany had already invaded and forcibly occupied five countries the IRA leadership announced that Hitler's Germany was "the energising force" of European politics and the "guardian" of national freedom.If "German forces should land in Ireland, they will land ... as friends and liberators of the Irish people".Their chief of staff, Sean Russell, went off to Berlin where he was fĂȘted as a representative of the Irish Republic, met leading Nazis and advised on their military plans for the invasion of Britain.The IRA's main publication, War News, was not just pro-Nazi, it was very pleased that the "cleansing fire" of the German armies was driving the Jews from Europe. Belfast, it claimed, was increasingly "in the hands of international Jewry" and the de Valera government was dominated by the "Jews and Freemasons" who were becoming the "new owners of Ireland".After 100 years of stable democracy, Ireland seems intent on sliding rapidly towards the status of a rogue state.

Kate Smyth Jim Brick • Mar 3, 2020 at 08:07

A great place for Islam to base itself, no doubt.

Gary Beatson • Mar 1, 2020 at 15:47

Hi Mark

I hope you are not insulted by this, but on your videos you might want to ditch the stage makeup. TV resolution is so good now it looks like a coat of paint.

Zack • Mar 1, 2020 at 14:52

The college graduates with 6 figure debt is a cute strawman argument but underplays a real problem and the attraction free college and college debt relief poses. The 6 figure debtor (even unrelieved) is on track for the mandarin class sinecure that their plutocrat parents were aiming for; the kids that could have gone to state public university on the cheap but the ROI for overpriced private colleges and the perceived social status the degree confers works just fine for them.

Rather it's the "never should have been encouraged to enroll kids" who have the class action claim to being defrauded. Sold on the idiotic idea starting in kindergarten that everyone is both equal and equally above average. So they all need calculus and should go to college. But no skill, or specific training comes from a HS diploma. No better prepared for the entry level job they could get as a 16 year old 10th grader. Yet they believe high pay is a birthright. So they enroll in third tier colleges. Then flunk out at phenomenal rates after a few semesters with only the paperwork of a 4 or 5 figure loan to mount on the wall. Now they're 20. A protected, though dispiriting union job (plus pension) working the desk at the DMV for 25 years is likely as attractive as the "trust me to make your life awesome" schtick of presidential protectionist populism.

Perry Pattetic Zack • Mar 1, 2020 at 15:42

Mike Rowe has been banging this drum.My view:Most people don't learn much of use at school after 16 (probably 14).If they are not going to be a doctor or scientist they should leave the school system at 16, go to trade or vocational school or take a local job and learn to work until they are 18. Then decide.

States and even counties run the modern equivalent of the old Trade Guilds, restricting the number of qualified plumbers and electricians by making them serve long apprenticeships, as indentured labor. They have to get re-licensed when they move to another state.

If we throw out the 30 million illegals and halt immigration, there will be unprecedented demand for skilled tradespeople. Wages will rise. Prices will rise but people will have the money to pay for American workers. Tax revenues will rise. Fewer people will be in extended childhood until 30.

Perry Pattetic • Mar 1, 2020 at 12:18

Liberals project their bad intentions, and conservatives project their good intentions. Either way, liberals win.

I thought previously that the Moscow Golden Shower story was a real-life Clinton escapade, given how the Cs hate the Os. Maybe it was hushed up by the CIA and FBI, and then re-sold to attack Trump.

So I was thinking of how the Deep State Dems would cope with either Stalinist Sanders or Mussolini Mike, and it then occurred to me that the 25th Amendment idea was tabled as insurance, in the event that Sanders won in 2016, with a Clinton/Obama cadre in his cabinet.

So this whole plan was set up to keep the Clinton/Obama regime in power, in the event of a Sanders win (because no way would Trump win!), and then re-purposed against Trump. Just a thought.

Perry Pattetic • Mar 1, 2020 at 10:27

If Bloomberg was President, he would save on his personal bodyguards and private jets, his security in Bermuda and London and NY etc.He would probably offload $5bn of costs over his remaining lifetime, if he just won one term and lived to 90.We, however, can't afford to be disarmed whilst paying to protect him from us.

Greg the Kiwi • Feb 29, 2020 at 21:52

Thanks Mark , a great Q & ABloomberg to Waugh - ha ,how further apart can you go ?I liked the question about the conservative conference in Rome , I too listened to Douglas Murray's rather impassioned speech , very much looking forward to seeing him with you in Roma again !Your evident passion about restrictions on our freedom of speech mirrors our own desperate thoughts on it , I had not heard of that disgusting suggestion about the UK NHS , God forbid , Boris better forbid too !j

Kate Smyth • Feb 29, 2020 at 18:04

The admirably Islamophobic Churchill never had to contend with "cancellation" - a fate which nearly befell Boris after his burka comments. Yet PM Johnson is curiously MIA on free speech, and appears to be as flimsy in general as Mark predicted.

Having listened to interviews and read more about the new Free Speech Union in the last week, I have some reservations about the (otherwise very commendable) initiative launched by Toby Young. James Delingpole - who has thrown his support behind it - has a very good piece at Breitbart today which raises some important issues. My sense is that the FSU will focus on pushing back against the "trans-Taliban" but exercise caution in defending critics of Islam. What is their position on the views expressed by "Mila" (the French schoolgirl)?

The organisation is genuinely non-partisan, but there's a lurking element of free speech relativism - including the "assessment" of cases - which needs to be clarified. Apparently Douglas Murray has an advisory role; a certain Canadian free speech advocate (and absolutist) would be a good addition to their team, imho.

RAC Kate Smyth • Mar 1, 2020 at 15:59

Boris is a lesser evil than Theresa May but that's damning with faint praise. Churchill was the first western leaderto warn about the looming threat of Islam which is why Obama sent that White House bust of the great man back to England. Most weak kneed conservatives were too fearful of the hostile media to make any noise about that outrage. As long as 'hate speech' is codified into law in the west genuine free speech will continue to disappear. It's one of the left's favorite weapons now and very effective I might add.

Kate Smyth RAC • Mar 1, 2020 at 18:45

Ah yes - the bust of Churchill removed by BHO. Well, if "The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam", then the past should not either. Thankfully, President Trump restored it to its rightful place.

I get very despondent about the state of free speech, R, as you do. From Islamic intimidation to "cancel culture" it's all going downhill. Something like the FSU in the UK is an excellent idea but could be counter-productive if its seen to pick and choose issues (and individuals) to defend. People are missing the forest for the trees: the left's vicious censoriousness is paving the way for our Submission.

The other day, after reading Mark's "Valentine from Mohammed" column, I listened to a short excerpt from a very intense Christopher Hitchens interview which struck me to the core the first time I heard it years ago (in long form), in which he discusses the Danish cartoons and the Rushdie fatwa and the catastrophic trajectory of free speech. Like Mark, he sounded the alarm which very few people have heeded about the return of "... a Stone Age ideology derived from the desert... which claims the right to make you afraid even to READ in the United States". (The unnecessary visual and music audio detract a bit, but it's worth listening to: "Christoper Hitchens - The Death of Free Speech" - by Morphing Reality on YouTube.)

As you've often noted, even Fox News and Conservative Inc have completely abandoned the issue. And very few people seem to notice or care, never mind push back.

Segnes Schonken RAC • Mar 1, 2020 at 21:03

Powerful stuff, R. I hope that this exchange will be widely read.

Segnes Schonken Kate Smyth • Mar 1, 2020 at 21:44

Great discussion, K. Personally, I have never felt absolutely free to speak freely. I shalln't list examples of the taboos which I encountered early in my life, because there will still be people who respond hysterically. Power has shifted, and with it has shifted the ideas which are not to be uttered and the prejudices which may not be disrespected. So too has there been a shift in who is in the gunsights of those who wield power, and whose speech is most enthusiastically monitored and stifled. Once the censors were the dreaded *Establishment*; now they are the dreaded *Liberals* (in the new sense of the word). Once the fair game was liberals (in the original sense); now, it is - oh, hell, still liberals (in the original sense). It matters no wit: the fight for free speech is a good fight, but in my humble opinion it is not a new fight. There have ever been unwelcome beneficiaries: pornographers, the terminally closed-minded, extremists, liars, but those who advocate free speech weaken their case when they argue for freedom of speech for some and not for others. The defence of free speech must be that it gives access to the market of ideas to all, and that bad ideas will not survive thorough scrutiny.

(I wonder sometimes whether I'm right about that. Stuff like pornography and certain rotten ideas seem to be durable. Still, if free speech is ever to be sustainable, it must be absolutely universal, as I see it, because bad notions which are kept hidden stew into really toxic credos. Lots of good things die in darkness, and lots of bad things prosper there. Some bad things prosper anywhere. Well, that's what I find.)

Grief, can you believe it: there was a time I was expected to shoot on sight at the people whose motto I've just invoked? Mind you, you couldn't ascribe gentle passivity to the folk who proclaimed it. Well, the more it changes, the less it changes...

Segnes Schonken Segnes Schonken • Mar 2, 2020 at 02:08

"{...}matters no wit", help me who can. I do know the difference between a whit and a wit; I simply find that my stock of the latter erodes as my stock of the former tends towards infinity. Sorry. Doing my best.

RAC Kate Smyth • Mar 2, 2020 at 17:07

Your first sentence really struck home Kate. How he got away with that ugly claim with only tepid resistance from the cowardly right not to mention the supposedly secular left as well boggles my mind to this day. Wonderful piece and I wish more shared your concluding summary. We are not giving up as some claim by pointing out what should be obvious to all. Lose the right of free speech and all is lost.

Agree wholeheartedly with you and RAC. What concerns me - re your reference to "power" - is the global projection of Islam's influence, with all 7 billion of us submitting to its blasphemy laws.

The pornography issue is "durable" but increasingly dark, as you imply: paedophilia, human trafficking and other criminal activities seem to thrive via the Dark Web. There was an article in The Australian on "hurtcore" about a year ago; until then, I had no idea of the extent of extreme evil in which so many "normal" people participate.

chickensoup • Feb 29, 2020 at 16:34

great audio.

Will you be reading A Handful of Dust anytime soon?

Segnes Schonken • Feb 29, 2020 at 15:36

Speaking of starting off with one thing and turning it to something else, I have found my own feelings about the Democratic party's competition for the presidential nomination to be interesting. I set out ready to be amused, was indeed vastly amused, and was pleased to be so amused. Then a gargoyle fell from a high parapet directly onto my foot. It came to me as a revelation that the Democrats are so unanimous about dragging the United States far to the left, JADAWS-wards (Just Another Damned Anglophone-ish Welfare State), if you'll permit. Of course it's not a revelation at all, because the Democrats have long driven the JADAWS wedge a long way beyond its thin end, 'though for Mr Bloomberg the light perhaps comes on a little more slowly. Really, what comes to me as revelation proves to be merely a change of mood on my part.

Beguiling as the clowns have been, they've loaded the baby into the cannon and aimed it at the brick wall.

The fate of Tony Last, to lose wife, inheritance and hope and finish up entertaining a ragged psychopath in a jungle bereft of all civilisation, ironically with what little is left of one's once enviable civilisation, seems to me to be not far removed from the future which the Democratic party now promises.

Perhaps that's why the show struck me as more angry and less funny than usual. Thanks for that. Sometimes I need my mind cleared.

Walt Trimmer • Feb 29, 2020 at 15:10

Perhaps comparing a Bernie Sanders campaign with the 1964 presidential run by Barry Goldwater would be useful. After Nixon's defeat by Kennedy and JFK's assassination the conservatives put a a true ideologically conservative candidate and were crushed. Out of the ashes of defeat in the chaotic 1960's Nixon was able to come back but more importantly it started the career of Ronald Reagan.

Given the current demographics, could a Bernie defeat lead to a true socialist in 2024? Note that I don't discount that Bernie could win the popular vote this year under certain easily foreseen circumstances.

Back in '64, in our hearts we knew AuH2O was right but here we are today anyway.

Thomas Carey • Feb 29, 2020 at 15:05

Hi Mark, I was asking Alexa for an update on the corona virus and she said "it's the end of the world as we know it, but Xi's just fine". As she was speaking I thought I heard REM playing softly in the background. Now Siri says "Alexa is an alarmist". What is your take? How much of the media hysteria is for ratings and clicks, how much to damage Trump and how much is a real concern? Also if your are going to be lied to, do you prefer it from a real person, or voice recognition software tied to an internet search engine?

Todd Lewis • Feb 29, 2020 at 14:39

In the past the Democrats could easily afford to lose. They have long had the deep state in place that would preserve and advance their agenda regardless of who was in the White House or Congress. The Republicans could never muster enough courage, clout, or unity to roll it all back in any significant way. This hopefully is not the case any longer. If the Democrats lose the Presidency as well as both houses of Congress their whole agenda may seriously be headed for the Dumpster. All Democrat candidates are pathetic narrative nerds. Their only hope is that the education system and the media have so effectively lobotomized the electorate that they can still manage to hang on without loss to their agenda of corruption. A sea change is still needed here and I hope we are really on the brink of it. Let us pray.

Fran Lavery • Feb 29, 2020 at 13:52

Great invigorating Mailbox, Mark! I love the remarks you directed at Boris Johnson and getting back to the real conservative values and energizing debates by including more opinions. Exactly right! People can make up their own minds about what ideas resonate with them. This is the way forward in free societies whatever your political leanings. Faith can be left for the religious followers of the world, and I gravitate to religions, but people aren't down for this phony protect-the-snowflake crap, like identity politics, trans crap and climate propaganda, for just a few examples. People aren't idiots out there. Most people want to do well, they want to improve their lives, protect and provide for their family and they have no other use for government than to help them get there most efficiently. If a candidate can't get it done then get them they can bloody hell out of our way.

It was also interesting your observations offered up in response to questions about the Democratic candidates and their race for the nomination. I'm just not sure the Democrats think they will lose yet. They are probably already recalculating their preferred nominee based on whether it's hype or actual growing concerns over the coronavirus and could see that as President Trump's Achilles Hell.

Josh Passell • Feb 29, 2020 at 13:09

May I gently remind my fellow Club members that Elizabeth Warren--my senior senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts--is in fact no more genuine Cherokee than cold crab omelet, her recipe for the cookbook Pow Wow Chow? And that her cheekbones and "family lore" are no more proof of tribal heritage than wearing a feather in her hair? And that her ill-advised DNA test showed her to have no Native American progenitors going back several generations, thereby making her story of familial bigotry and elopement enough of a crock to put crock in Crockagawea? And that to mock her longstanding claim of indigenous blood now causes her accute embarrassment and an overwhelming need to apologize to the nearest Indian to hand, even if he's standing in from of a cigar store? So, please, dear readers, have a heart when it comes to the Cherokee Dominatrix--oh dear, I suppose I mean the D.A.R. Dominatrix. She's going to need all your good thoughts not to lose her home state to Bernie in the Massachusetts primary on Tuesday.

Segnes Schonken Josh Passell • Feb 29, 2020 at 15:39

I needed a fix of levity, J. Thanks!

Paul Courtney Josh Passell • Mar 1, 2020 at 09:22

Josh: Have you noticed that the Dem nabobs calling for Mayor Pete, Amy K, Bloomberg and Steyer to drop, nobody said Warren? Because she's a squaw? Or because she might take some votes from (shudder) Bernie? The ganging up against Bernie is now getting eerily reminiscent of Republican '16, the establishment desperate to stop the outsider is now flailing. So, am I worried Bernie (having buried "Jeb" Biden and other establishment plan "b"s) will ride a wave of enthusiasm to victory in Nov.? Well, it sure helped Trump that he ran against Hillary, Bernie has to run against Trump.

Perry Pattetic • Feb 29, 2020 at 12:19

BoJo just wants to get his end away with his watermelon chick.Of course, the NHS pan is about eliminating the white working class English, but when Boris is rejected because of his burka letterbox comment, be will not be amused.Perhaps he will have to fly to Singapore for treatment...

Perry Pattetic Perry Pattetic • Feb 29, 2020 at 15:42

...said chick now being pregnant.
BoJo gazes adoringly at her whilst she gazes adoringly at the camera.This is Harry redux.
But Harry is irrelevant - BoJo has his hands on real power, as well as her.

Brian from Minneapolis • Feb 29, 2020 at 12:05

I lied, I have one more comment. Boris needs to wake up and realize that his job isn't over. The people didn't just want Brexit but someone who will bring back the UK from utter ruin. If he only delivers Brexit and then becomes a new brand of BS, they'll want Trump to become the new PM when his second term is done. A far more better person to run the UK if you ask me.

Ian Cory • Feb 29, 2020 at 11:17

I wonder if the Democrats have pondered the massive defeat of Jeremy Corbyn and the hard-left Labour Party in the recent UK General Election. The Labour Party doesn't seem to have given it much thought if one considers the candidates for the party's post-election leadership contest and their socio-politically detached utterances which completely ignores the collapse in their vote in traditional Labour-voting heartlands. Perhaps it is because the ideological Left, in its Anglo Saxon manifestation, has now been completely infiltrated by anal-retentive "wokenes" and which, in its ideological purity, has been rendered incapable of acknowledging that it could be wrong about anything.

Brian from Minneapolis • Feb 29, 2020 at 10:02

I'll have one final thought today if I may. When it comes to freedom of speech, we need to fight this while things are "civil" before it's too late. "When the cure is worse than the disease". That's a quote that we should think about when our freedom of speech is taken away. The only cure for that disease, the disease of having our speech taken away from us is civil war.

Brian from Minneapolis • Feb 29, 2020 at 09:54

Bloomberg says he'll bring both parties back together and unite this country. Just how does he plan to do that? Does he mean that he'll bring back the good old days when the establishment are back in charge and we get Mitt Romney as our Republican rep again? It's too late to "unite" both parties. We know who the RINOs are and we know there are more waiting in the depths of the swamp.

When it comes to socialism. China's handling of the Corona Virus shows us how bad not only socialism is but how bad communism is. The so called diverse utopia that the radicals want us to have can't even contain a deadly virus and thanks to globalism, it's close to a pandemic. I don't want to hear from our leaders that we'll sacrifice a city or two to find a cure so the elites will survive. I often wonder if these virus outbreaks aren't deliberate. For a nation that realizes that more people is a bad thing, how else can you implement a plan to reduce your nation's population by a third or more and a viral outbreak is the way to do it without being completely obvious. I hope I'm wrong but I know that when China gets desperate, it's not impossible that they'd go that far and who else will stand by their side than the global elites.